Golriz Ghahraman’s second bid to avoid a conviction for last year’s $9000 shoplifting spree has failed.

High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning upheld the district court’s decision, stating the conviction’s consequences were not disproportionate.

Ghahraman’sdefence cited mental health issues, but the Crown argued the offending showed premeditation.

A second bid by former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman to avoid a conviction for last year’s nearly $9000 shoplifting spree has failed.

Ghahraman, a lawyer who formerly served as the Greens’ justice spokeswoman, was convicted in June and fined $1600 rather than being ordered to serve a custodial or supervision sentence. But in the Auckland District Court, Judge June Jelas denied her request for a discharge without conviction, which was the basis for an appeal heard last week in the High Court at Auckland.

In a judgment released this morning, High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning said “the consequences of conviction cannot be said to be ‘out of all proportion’ to the gravity of offending in this case” – meaning there was no error in the district court decision.

Ghahraman’s conviction decreased the odds of being allowed to revive her legal career after a seven-year hiatus prompted by her ascension to Parliament.

Lawyer Annabel Cresswell told the district court in June that a mental health report formed the crux of her submissions regarding her request for a discharge without conviction. It found a “clear diagnosis of complex PTSD” with two key contributing factors: her early life in war-torn Iran and the “public vitriol, threats and abuse” she received while in Parliament.

Cresswell said the “threats of rape and death were constant and ongoing and credible”, to the point where her security detail was similar to that of the Prime Minister.

She described “loss-reactive shoplifting” in which otherwise law-abiding individuals steal as part of a mental health crisis.

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The fact she had so much to lose showed a mental health crisis, Cresswell said.

“This offending was extraordinarily out of character,” she explained. “She didn’t need the items that were taken.”

Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock, representing police, argued against a discharge without conviction during the sentencing hearing. The link between Ghahraman’s mental health and her criminal conduct was not as strong as the defence made it out to be, the prosecutor argued, noting a mental health assessor found there was “a possible link”.

“The possibility of that is no more than that – a possibility,” she said.

While a conviction might make it more difficult to revive a legal career, that was a decision that would ultimately be up to the Law Society, McClintock said.

The offending had the hallmarks of premeditation, she said.

“This was a spree of offending,” McClintock explained. “It’s not a one-off event. It’s not a ‘moment of madness’-type case.”

There might be another explanation for the offending other than a mental health breakdown, she said: “Simply, that she wanted the items that she took.

“On its face, that explanation, given the [premeditated] nature of the conduct, appears the more likely of the two,” she said.

McClintock also suggested Judge Jelas take into account the breach of trust with the public given “a person of her standing and her role has a certain standard expected of them – as a former lawyer and a member of Parliament”, and the “heightened understanding of the significance of their conduct”.

MORE TO COME

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.